There you can search by state or by the federal government and then by occupation to see what state or federal agencies regulate a particular profession. The site also has the addresses and phone numbers of the licensing agencies.

Name Indexes

The licensing and professional regulatory agencies keep name indexes that list the people or companies that they license or regulate, usually including the licensees’ addresses. More detailed information sometimes is available, such as investigations of complaints or inspection reports.

You have to check with each individual agency to determine what records they keep and how the records can be accessed.

A large number of state and federal agencies that regulate professions are putting their name indexes and at least some of their records online.

Professional Licenses Online

Many state licensing and regulatory agencies and some federal agencies put their indexes online, which you can search to see if a particular person or company has a license or is a regulated business and to get basic information on them.

You’ll need to check the websites for states or the federal government to see what licensing and regulatory agencies exist and what licensing databases have been put online.

One website that keeps track of licensing agencies in different states and on a federal level is:

California Medical Board

Lawyers

Reporters can locate online records on lawyers through the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory and through state bar associations.

Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory

This legal directory, which is referenced at the American Bar Association’s website, is a good site for getting information on attorneys and law firms in the United States and other countries. Go to the:

Besides contact information for an attorney, the site will also note any disciplinary actions against a lawyer.

Teachers

Teachers are credentialed by states.

In California the Commission on Teacher Credentialiing has a searchable online database you can use to check if a teacher is credentialed and if the commission has taken official action against a teacher. Go to the CTC’s:

Pilots and Aircraft Owners

Pilots are licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration and you can search a national database to find information on an individual pilot. The FAA also has a database on registered owners of aircraft.

FAA

The FAA has an online database you can search by name of owner or by the registration number (N-number) of an aircraft. Go to the:

The Landings website has databases for locating information on federally licensed pilots, owners of aircraft, maintenance reports on particular aircraft filed with the FAA (which are called Service Difficulty Reports), accident reports filed by the National Transportation Safety Board, and airports. The data is drawn from the FAA and NTSB databases. Go to:

At the main page click on the link at the top for Databases. At the new page, on the left select:

Certifications – Pilots – for licensed pilots, searchable by name.

Registrations – US – for registered owners of aircraft, searchable by a name or by the registration number (N-number) of an aircraft.

Reports – SDRs – for service difficulty reports on mechanical problems of aircraft, searchable by registration or N number.

Reports – NTSB – for accident reports on aircraft by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Professional Associations

Many professional associations have online directories of their members that list phone numbers, e-mail addresses or mailing addresses.

So if you are researching someone who you think may be a member of a particular profession, try going to the website for the association for that profession to see if there is a directory listing for the person.

If you know the name of the professsional association, use a search engine like Google to locate the association’s website.

Or just try searching for the name of the profession and adding the word association or organization to your string of search words.

About this Tutorial

This tutorial was originally written by Paul Grabowicz for students in his Computer Assisted Reporting class, and later modified for public use.

Republishing Policy

This content may not be republished in print or digital form without express written permission from Berkeley Advanced Media Institute. Please see our Content Redistribution Policy at multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/content_redistribution/.